Short Fiction

Short fiction has to be more focused than long. Fewer words must convey
the idea. I think of it as impatient fiction. Get to the point. Don't drag
it out, or it will become long fiction with a short message. Usually, I
think in terms of long fiction, but every now and then, something clicks
and out comes a short story.

The Fire Room

It took Frank a year to migrate from Czechoslovakia
to Pittsburgh and after he got there, he didn't know if he wanted to stay.
He missed the green hills and the family farm. He missed the healing smell
of earth from home, but there was nothing to do there but farm.

Within a month he was working night shift in
the steel mills, emersed in clanging noise and glaring light.

On the way home one morning, he walked into
a hospital and asked for a job. The woman in the employment office asked
him what he did on his last job.

"Melt big pot iron."

She figured he was just the man to operate
the incinerator. She led Frank to the building superintendent's office,
down a long basement passage lined with steam-pipes.

Mr. Cousins, the building superintendent--a big man, led the way to the
incinerator. He told Frank when to build the fire high and when to let
it get low, according to the schedule of the cleaners. He told him what
time to get there in the morning and what time
to leave.

"When the fire's the hottest, throw in the
red bags. That's contaminated stuff from the O.R."

Before he left, Mr. Cousins told Frank he was
in charge of the fire room and everything in it. He was to keep it clean.

Frank stood just inside the door of the small
room. "Disease germs." There were no windows and just one crusty
light bulb clinging to a cord hanging from a ceiling lost in darkness.
The four corners were rounded with dirt or shadows. Sitting in a pit and
protruding half way across the room toward him was the incinerator. It
looked like nothing compared to the blast furnaces at the steel mill. He
looked down at its mouth. He looked up at the chimney disappearing through
the ceiling. "Disease germs."

The two side walls were lined with about a
dozen fifty-five gallon drums filled with litter. Frank stepped into the
room and then turned about as a cart rumbled down the corridor. A large
porter appeared in the door. "You the burner man?"

"Whadyouwant?"

"Here's some more trash for you." The
man pointed to the drum on the cart, leaned against the hall wall and took
out his cigarettes.

"Put it here," said Frank, pointing to a spot
in front of the furnace mouth.

The porter found himself doing it.

"Do no smoke here. Go some place other."

Frank began his job.

From the beginning, Frank liked the idea that
he was destroying germs. To destroy disease was good. It made him feel
important. The room was important, too, for that was the place to which
the sickness was brought to be destroyed. He destroyed drum after drum
of litter. He built the flames high. The heat felt good, healing like the
sun and the hot summer air.

Frank decided the walls needed cleaning. He
walked up the long corridor to the central basement area. Off the narrow
hallway was the freight elevator, the laundry chute room, and a small room
filled with candy and cigarette machines. It was filled with porters and
housekeepers.

Frank looked no further. He saw what he wanted.
Just inside the door sat a bucket of water with a mop. He picked it up,
scowled at the loafers, and headed back down the corridor.

"Hey, man. Where you going with my mop?"

"You no use. You laugh and play."

"Man, I want that bucket."

Frank stopped and looked up at the big man.
He had never seen a black man before coming to America. He had never seen
one up close. He wondered why some whites didn't like them. He looked closely
to see what was so bad. The big fellow shifted his weight back and forth
and grinned at the little man peering at him.

"Whatsa matter, man?" he giggled a little.
"Whad you looking at? All I wants my bucket."

Frank peered up at him. "What your job is?"

"I'ma cleaning man."

"You clean walls?"

"Well, yeah, man," he laughed. "I clean walls
alla time. Nothing I like better than cleaning walls." He slapped
his leg. "Man, I could clean walls all day, but I done cleaned 'em all."

Frank grabbed him by the arm and spun around,
yanking the man half off his feet.

"What you doing, man? Where you going,
now? I want my bucket."

Frank stopped. "You like clean walls?
I got dirty walls. I let you clean." He yanked him by the arm again
pulling him sideways down the hall behind him.

"Man, I was fooling. I hate cleaning walls.
I got a floor to wash. I was fooling."

"I no fooling. You sit in candy box room to
wash floor? I got dirty wall. You wash." Frank was small but powerful.
It is likely the porter was stronger, but there was something about this
little man that defied argument. Frank had made up his mind and that was
the end of it. He dragged the protesting man into the incinerator room.

"Man. You don't mean these old walls."

"You clean walls. Now."

"Man. I ain't even got a sponge. All I got's
a mop. I come back later."

"You use mop on wall."

The big man tried to open his mouth and then
tried to shut it. He picked up the mop, wrung it out, and slapped it against
the wall.

"Man."

Two other porters had followed, at a distance,
down the corridor. Now they stood in the door and looked. First, they didn't
believe it. They looked at each other; then they looked at the wet figure
under the wet mop slopping against the wall. They looked at the little
man and then at each other. They laughed. They laughed loud. They shouted
"hoo hoo" at each other. They pointed at their wet friend and then they
stopped.

Frank stood in front of them, staring at them,
eyes like slits of granite. "Dump cans in fire." He pointed to the last
two cans. They both moved at the same time. As they were dumping the cans,
their friend began to laugh at them. The three of them looked at each other
and laughed.

"Man. You want this place clean. We gonna get
it so clean you never see nothing like it."

"Man, go get some buckets and sponges."

"Get that mop off the wall. You gonna streak
it up and never get it clean."

"Clean that floor."

Feet ran up the hall and feet ran down the
hall. The three of them were working, two on the walls and one on the floor.
A few of their friends came down to see what was going on. The enthusiasm
was catching and soon there were eight porters cleaning the room. They
got ladders and cleaned the ceiling, probably for the first time ever.
They scrubbed the pit, the walls, the floor until the incinerator room
was the cleanest place in the hospital. They even cleaned the light bulb.
They laughed and sang and Frank decided they were crazy.

In the weeks that followed, the walls were
painted white by two painters who were supposed to be painting the central
sterile room. A carpenter built Frank a platform in front of the disease
mouth for a better angle for dumping. Then he built drum racks along the
walls.

Frank used the racks for the red bags, the
disease, the sickness germs. Frank would build the fire higher and higher
until the heat would drive him back. Then he would go to the rack. He would
lift down a drum of red bags and feed it to the inferno. Somehow, the heat
never drove him back when he was dumping the disease into the mouth. It
was why he was there. The bags would disappear into the red flames and
be gone. And Frank would stand and watch, and the heat would dry the sweat
from his clothes and his body. He felt clean.

The corridor that went down past the incinerator
room led on to a rarely used exit that opened into an alley that separated
the hospital from the Catholic Church. One day, Frank poked his head out
of his door and almost bumped into the priest hurrying up the hall. The
two men knew each other but did not speak, so brief was the time they faced
each other. Besides, they were both there on business. Frank watched the
black robe as it moved up the hall.

Frank turned back to the flames and the feeding
of the hungry mouth. At the same time that he wondered why the Father was
there, he knew. He was there to save a soul. He was there to clean a soul
of its sins. It was Frank's job to destroy disease germs of the body. Frank
threw in a drum of litter and grabbed another and dumped it. The flames
reached higher. Two more drums and the flames pushed him back. He heaved
a drum of red bags onto the platform and fed it to the inferno. The fire
rapidly absorbed the red bags as the disease germs disappeared into the
heat that licked his face and chest and arms.

Frank gradually became known as a character
to the others in the hospital. First of all, his dialect was so thick it
was difficult to know what he was saying. Secondly, he was a loner. He
kept to himself and questioned any friendly overtures. Thirdly, Frank's
demeanor made him stand out and after a few years near the flames, his
skin developed a leathery finish. His hair became coarse in appearance
due to the constant heat and drying. It stood almost straight up on his
head. His eyes were like walls.

But most of all, Frank's habits caused questions and comments. He would
continue to stand on the platform in front of the incinerator when the
heat bloomed out in waves, and in spite of the danger of an occasional
ether bottle exploding, he would lean slightly forward with his arms extended
out. And if any one ventured into the room when Frank was on the platform,
they quickly knew they had committed a great wrong. The cleaners began
to operate according to Frank's schedule. As the years passed, the unwritten
policy became tradition.

Frank was not an incinerator operator. His
job was to burn disease, the tool of the devil. He was the priest of the
fire room. He worked seven days a week and accepted no vacation. He took
off only for confession and mass on Sundays and holy days, and for eleven
years, he did not miss a day's work. He was never sick. He had no complaints.
He did his job, and management considered him a perfect, if strange, employee.

Then one morning in March, the first real obstacle
in the path of Frank's work occurred. He was scheduled for an annual physical
checkup, waste of time. He sat in the employee health office with his shirt
off.

The doctor listened with the funny ear plugs.
He stuck the end of the thing on Frank's chest and then on his back and
then on the chest again. "Deep breath." The doctor said it again.
"Take a deep breath."

Frank took a giant breath and blew it out quickly.
"I go now?"

The doctor tap tapped at the knees and then
looked closely at the chest. He looked in the ears and the nose, but always,
he came back to the chest. "Lie down on the table."

Frank did, starring at the ceiling.

The doctor ran his fingers over the skin in
the center of the chest under the gray mat of coarse hair. The doctor pressed
the skin. He moved it back and forth over the breast bone.

Frank watched the doctor as he squinted and
bent over. "I go now?"

"Not yet." The doctor straightened up
and walked across the room to talk to the nurse. She used the phone and
in a few minutes another doctor appeared and he, too, peered at Frank's
chest.

The two doctors talked and agreed. "Frank,
we're going to admit you as a patient."

"What you talk about?"

"You have a skin cancer. No doubt about it."

"Is that disease?"

"Well, yes it is."

"Is no possible. Does priest get soul black
from sin? Is no can be." Frank got off the table, put on his shirt,
and left as the two doctors tried to explain that they would have to run
some tests and maybe it wasn't malignant after all.

"I got work." He stalked back to the fire room,
but hadn't been there long when the doctor came in with Mr. Cousins.

"Frank," said Mr. Cousins, "you come with me."

"Who burn trash?"

"Never mind, Come with me."

"Who burn trash?"

"If you don't come, I'm going to fire you."

"Who burn trash?"

"Who'll damn well burn it if I fire you?"

"I'm no sick."

Mr. Cousins grabbed him by the arm. "I'll tell
you when you're sick and when you're not." With the doctor on one
arm and Mr. Cousins on the other, they moved up the hall like it was the
last mile.

"I'm no sick," Frank kept repeating.

They marched to a room already reserved for
him on the third floor.

The next morning, they wheeled Frank into surgery
and removed a small skin cancer from his chest.

"It's a good thing we caught it when we did,"
the doctor told him. "Tomorrow morning, we'll let you go home. In a week
you can come back to work. Maybe you better not get too close to the flames.
It's dried out your skin."

Frank looked at the doctor and the doctor left.

"Dumb stupid doctor. What he know? I can no
be sick ever." But he felt the bandages on his chest and knew they had
taken him to the operating room, to the place where the red bags came from.
There was a red bag down there now with his disease germs in it.

Frank had never had a dream. He had wondered
what people were talking about when they talked about their dreams. They
were crazy. When he went to bed, he slept until he woke up and then he
knew it was time to get up. This time, however, his body slept but his
mind did not, and things happened in his head:

In the center of a chancel on a three-legged
stool sat a priest in long, flowing robe which jerked
violently on secret explosions of wind so that the robe
stood out in all directions. And the lighting was different. Everything was bright until looked upon,
but when anything was looked upon, it darkened.

The priest's face was in darkness and could
not be seen. His hands lay in the light and across
his knees kneeled a man, his naked back made visible
by the light from the priest's hands as hungry nails
tore into weak flesh. As the flesh tore open, beautiful
music poured out of the lacerated back and the music
was heavy and the man screamed and struggled and the
chants were louder, faster, higher. And the priest
grabbed handfuls of flesh and tore and ripped, hands moving
faster, faster, the screams, the music pumping
the ears, the chants rising.

And Frank saw his own face was the priest's.

Frank woke up shouting against the music and
the light. When he saw only the nurse in the room, he knew there was something
wrong in his head. The nurse tried to give him a sedative, but he knocked
the little yellow pills out of her hand. She kept her distance then. They
brought him a light lunch. He let it sit. He wouldn't talk. The fire had
not destroyed the disease.

How could be? Frank knew what he had to do.
He had job to do. The fire had punished him for doing half job.

Frank was waiting for him when the doctor made
his rounds. "You let me have clothes now."

The doctor fumbled and stooped to pick up his
stethoscope. "How do you feel, Frank?"

"I go now. Bring clothes."

The doctor laughed a little. His left eyelid
was twitching.

"Bring clothes now."

The doctor picked up his stethoscope again
and sat on a chair. Frank stood over him.

"Bring clothes now."

"Well, Frank, are you sure you're okay?"

"I go fire room now."

"Well, Miss Jones," the doctor said to the
nurse, "what do you say we let him go. He looks pretty good to me."

Frank hurried down to the fire room. He chased
out the porter who had been doing the burning. He built the fire higher
and threw in red bag after red bag. One of them was the bag with his disease
germs. The flames licked out the mouth. Frank stood across the room, watching.
Slowly, he mounted the platform. He dropped in the last bag. He leaned
forward. It disappeared in the flames. Frank leaned into the flames to
see if disease germs could be seen separate from the flames.

He could hear the disease germs searing. The
roar of the flames grew louder than ever before. The light of the fire
was blinding light. The flames were singing. Their chanting became loud
and high pitched, faster and higher, and even so, he could hear the disease
germs screaming above the flames and everything blended and there was harmony
and it was right. Priest give soul to Church so Church can destroy diseases
of the soul. What you give the fire chancel so for the disease of the body
be destroyed?

Frank stepped across the alter. Beautiful music
arose as a terrible heat destroyed all the disease germs of his body, and
everything was right.